


it storms on mars.

by iamsolarflare



Category: Doom (Video Games), Furi (Video Game)
Genre: (handshake emoji) similar traumas, A Very Large But Not Too Graphic Fight Scene, Action, Crossover, Gen, and you will pry that out of my cold dead hands, doomguy and the stranger both have selective mutism, i have some thoughts about doomguy and stranger and most of it is just, takes place during doom 2016 because that's the game i know the most about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23389699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamsolarflare/pseuds/iamsolarflare
Summary: "The Jailer is the key," the Voice would say. "Kill him, and you'll be free."(in which the Stranger wakes up on a red planet and makes hasty but completely understandable assumptions)
Relationships: None
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	it storms on mars.

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably exactly the sort of fic you think it's going to be and i can only hope you enjoy it. i barely know what a doom is but all the doomguy characterization i've seen reminds me of the stranger in a backwards weird way and i like it a lot

_It’s storming again,_ he thinks. No rain, just wild clouds that lash around a central point in the distance. His breath comes out heavy in the air, and when he takes a breath again he can tell the quality is… not the planet he fell asleep on. Only trace oxygen. Humans can’t survive on this little. He’s lucky his body processes carbon dioxide instead.

 _I’m back,_ is his second thought. Back in the sky. Back in prison. Back where-

Lightning cracks in the distance. Even before the thunder hits, he flinches instinctively, bracing himself for the voltage. It doesn’t come, of course, but the phantom pain is still there, won’t go away.

He takes a deep breath. There’s a simple solution here. That’s what the Voice would say, is something along those lines. Something like _“Sometimes you wake up, sometimes you don’t know where you are.”_

He’s not good at that sort of monologue. His walk towards the eye of the storm is lonely and silent, as barren as the landscape around him. Nothing but rusty soil and the occasional crash of thunder. But there’s a path here, clear towards the center of the storm. He knows what he has to do. He knows what he has to find. 

_“The Jailer is the key,”_ the Voice would say. _“Kill him, and you’ll be free."_

He keeps walking. Tries to brace himself against the regular cracks of lightning, tries to stop counting them. It had to be storming, didn’t it?

And then he stops - there’s a wide, flat space in the landscape that opens up in front of him. This is the arena, if the pattern holds. This is where he has to fight for his freedom. This is…

Someone steps into the arena from one side. A heavily armored figure, sort of like the Hand was. Doesn’t carry themself in the same way as the Hand though. It’s hard to tell what, exactly, he’s seeing that’s the difference, and it doesn’t matter. He just has to get out. He just has to get through.

He steps into the arena.

The armored figure ignores him. They’re looking somewhere else, over towards the cliffs at the brewing storm. When they turn around, clearly scanning the area for _something,_ their eyes move right over him like he’s not even there.

Is this their game? Ignore him and let him flinch every time there’s a flash of lightning? He unsheathes his sword.

The figure whips around incredibly quickly, one hand moving to grab something, other loose and open. There’s a split second where he can see the patterns. Lines and lines of directed, focused fire. They’re probably a good shot. It’ll be tougher to get in close, he’ll have to place his own blaster shots appropriately-

-The figure cocks their head to the side. They don’t draw any sort of weapon. They make no move to attack, just - well, he can’t see through the visor, but he’s pretty sure they’re staring at him. When their hands start moving, it’s not to draw a weapon, it’s some sort of… something else.

Sign language, maybe? He doesn’t know what they’re saying. He can’t respond, either, not like he’s spoken since - 

lightning flashes

\- since he was imprisoned. He holds his sword steady and stares, waiting for the slightest twitch of aggression towards him. Calm, collected breaths, taking in every single piece of battle damage on the power armor. The strange rune near the top visor, the way they lower their hands slowly. It’s like he’s less of a threat to them and more of a strange inconvenience.

He tries to say something, just in case that’s changed for him recently. Opens his mouth and is both frustrated and relieved when no words will form into sound. That means he’s still him. He readjusts his footing, ready to spring into motion at the slightest provocation. Across from him, the… well, all the Jailers had other names. He can’t just think of them as the armored figure. The Armor will do, since it’s all he can tell about them.

The Armor shakes their head slowly as he adjusts his stance. They lower their arms to their sides, both open. Both empty. Some sort of… he tries his best to parse it. Maybe some sort of gesture of _“I won’t attack if you don’t”_ perhaps? He raises his sword a little higher - he’s not staying here. This new captor won’t keep him here.

They shake their head again, and their boot moves in the red soil underfoot - his eyes immediately flick to that new motion briefly, expecting it to be a distraction or a change in stance, but instead it’s… writing. He goes through his foggy memory - the Voice taught him a scant few words in writing, he can only hope that it happens to be the same language as this person.

He lowers his sword to the dust, not taking his eyes off the Armor for a second as he traces his own lines in the dirt in response. He’s not really paying attention to what they’re writing, anymore, more splitting his attention between making sure they don’t start attacking and writing out one of the few words he knows in clean, precise strikes through the dirt.

_JAILER?_

The Armor shakes their head once more, gestures down at their own writing. It’s more scrawled, less exact, but the basic shapes are the language he was taught. There’s one word there that he’s not… really sure of, what it means, and that’s unfortunate - instinct tells him it’s the key part of the entire sentence.

_YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE A [???]._

That word. What is that _word?_ The Voice didn’t teach him that one. He hastily scratches out new words in the dirt, faster this time, movements blurring just slightly.

_DON’T KNOW WHAT [???]. WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE?_

The Armor cocks their head to the side. Maybe they emote more from behind that visor and this is the only expression he can actually tell they’re making. They slowly write something in the dirt again, near-opaque visor not doing anything to block out the intense sensation he’s being stared at.

_A STRANGER._

...He’d laugh if he could make sounds. Of course this new Jailer of his would know what he called himself now, instead of Rider. Of course. This is a case like the Song, an attempt to lull him into staying a prisoner by his own will instead of coming to blows. He is still trapped.

He lunges, springboards forward off the ground faster than humanly possible, sword and gun at the ready. The Armor steps back in surprise, looks almost taken aback, and then pulls out what looks to be some sort of plasma rifle.

His old instincts kick in. The Armor leads with a barrage of projectiles, a wide spread like they’re used to fighting many opponents. He weaves between the spaces, trailing dust and static electricity, firing in the Jailer’s general direction whenever he can. He’s not the most precise shot one-handed, but his opponent is bulky and it’s better to land sparse hits and not get hit himself. Focus on dodging. Outlast.

He skids in close and draws his blade; the Armor responds by pulling out and revving a chainsaw. Getting hit by that isn’t going to be easy to heal from. Not _impossible_ to heal from, but it’ll be about as painful as -

lightning flashes

\- he tries not to grit his teeth and focuses on the melee. Just dodging at first, trying to get a sense of the attack patterns of the Armor. Their attack arcs are wide sweeps; he repositions over and over, maneuvering closer, waiting for some sort of attack like he’s seen before, some sort of opening. A wider arc where he can duck under the swing of the chainsaw, jam his sword in its teeth. He kicks off the stalling weapon and leaps into the air, dragging his blade across the Armor’s chest before landing safely on the ground behind them.

Or that’s what should happen, except in the middle of swinging behind them, they wheel around, unfazed by the damage, and punch him in the face. He goes flying, hitting the wall of the cliff hard enough that his neck should snap.

It doesn’t. He pops his broken nose back into place - not technically necessary, but if it healed wrong in the middle of this fight he’d have it right in the corner of his vision and it’d block just a fraction of his sight range. Not likely to cause problems, but he can’t be too careful.

He gets to his feet, draws his sword again. The Armor shakes their head, does that same _“won’t attack if you don’t”_ gesture, and he pauses for a second, then a second more as they make no move to go back to fighting.

He’s not sure if he can beat them without dying. He’s certainly not willing to find out what happens if he _does_ die. He’s about to lunge again when the Armor holds up a hand and scratches something out in the dirt with one foot again. Something with that same word he doesn’t know how to translate.

_THE STORM ISN’T ME OR YOU. IT’S THE [???]S._

He raises his sword and taps the text that says _DON’T KNOW WHAT [???]._ Not _impatiently_ , per se, but it’s slightly frustrating to feel like he’s on the verge of knowing why the Armor is keeping him trapped here only to not be able to communicate.

...That must be what it’s like for the Voice to deal with him, come to think of it. Once more, if he was able to laugh, he’d probably chuckle at that.

The Armor keeps writing in the dirt.

_ACTUAL ENEMY. I’M NOT YOUR JAILER. SOMETHING ELSE._

All words he can read, this time. Not that they make any sense. Another enemy besides the Star, besides the Riders and the ceaseless annihilation? That somehow doesn’t seem possible to him. Or, at least, it doesn’t until he hears an earsplitting roar from something definitely not human.

The Armor steps in front of him, one hand extended as if to prevent him from running forward, and pulls out another gun. Heavy, long thin barrel, slowly charging energy - a railgun. He takes out his own gun as well, charges it and aims it at whatever’s incoming.

It’s a gross-looking thing, tall and bulky and reddish in color with large horns that make its head look larger than it should be. He’s taken aback for a second, but not for any longer than that - exposed skin. Living flesh and bone.

He lunges, dashing through the Armor’s attempt to stop him, and barrels into the thing full-force, slamming into it with one shoulder. There’s been nothing organic around him to show this effect until now, but as he kicks off of the beast’s raised arm it corrodes, becoming little more than a useless limb as it blackens. It’s still alive, though, but not for much longer - he brings his sword down into the center of its head and _pulls -_

lightning flashes

\- and then he’s cut clean through it and it’s just him and the Armor again, is what he thinks, only to have to dash aside as a full-blown laser of energy nearly misses him and bores straight through the second beast that had entered the arena.

It’s his turn to cock his head to the side at them, still silent and impassive (or at least, as much as he can be considering the tempest still whirling in the side overhead). He turns his attention to the word he doesn’t understand in the dirt, somewhat scuffed out by rapid motions.

 _D-E-M-O-N,_ is how it was spelled. Well, he definitely looks nothing like whatever the Armor was used to fighting, if the things they’d just had to fight were any indication. But that didn’t mean they weren’t a Jailer all the same; it’s not like his other Jailers only did _that._ He raises his sword once more.

“Fuck’s sake,” says the armored figure across from him. Apparently, the Armor _can_ talk after all, albeit in short, clipped syllables. Do they have the same aversion to speaking like he does, only less severe?

Their voice is ragged and hoarse from disuse, a low rumble somewhere between apathetic and annoyed. “Don’t know who you are. You’re clearly not a demon. I don’t want to fight you.”

 _That’s what the Song said,_ he thinks angrily at that last part, now wishing his voice would actually work _just briefly_ , and he raises his sword again. Who cares if this Jailer isn’t going to fight him? He’s _trapped_ here -

lightning flashes

\- something in the way the Armor’s posture changes conveys concern. He stiffens, more ready than ever to lunge at the slightest provocation.

One that never comes. The Armor turns away, looks towards the storm. “Gonna go stop that storm. You should come too.”

He takes a deep breath that he doesn’t really need to take at all and scratches out something in the dirt. 

_WHY?_

“Fight things. Someone has to stop them. Has to-” The Armor falls silent again, stock-still for nearly a minute, not even fidgeting a little. He waits patiently for the sentence to be completed, for the other shoe to drop.

“...has to rip and tear until it is done,” they finally finish, voice even lower and bitter and tired. They go back to writing in the dirt, just one word this time.

_SORRY._

He shakes his head. It’s not like there’s an apology needed. It doesn’t unnerve him any, and he’d very much appreciate it if the storm would stop -

lightning flashes

\- doing _that_. The Armor has to have noticed it by now, the way he stiffens and braces himself whenever there’s a bright flash of light cracking through the sky. He’s been trying to keep it subtle, but that doesn’t mean it’s entirely imperceptible.

They keep writing.

_I’M TIRED. WORK ALONE USUALLY. BUT YOU CAN KEEP UP._

...At this point, it’s pretty obvious this isn’t his Jailer after all - which means somewhere on this planet, there _is_ a Jailer, someone keeping him trapped here. He lets out a soft huff of breath.

 _The Jailer is the key._ Maybe, just maybe, the Armor is a locksmith of sorts. And it’s not like he has any other leads. Maybe this is the Voice, this time around, someone to more or less explain what’s going on.

 _NOT USED TO ALLIES,_ he scratches out in the dirt. And then, after a long pause, a few more words. _FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING._

 _GOOD,_ comes the response scratched in the dirt. _LET’S GET YOU A BIGGER GUN._

**Author's Note:**

> "why does doomguy use they/them in this fic" buddy the Stranger is an alien war drone from outer space, i'm pretty sure he only knew the Jailers's pronouns because the Voice went on pre-boss infodumps for him. he has no idea what a gender is
> 
> also please leave a comment if you have thoughts or want to yell. i live on comments


End file.
